"The border between the human and the animal has been at the core of various earlier works, though Hamilton would not use the word border, but rather membrane, or hyphen. Reminders of our animal origin have ceased to be as dismaying as they were a hundred years ago; indeed they are now invoked to help humanize us, as the Beast in the fairy tale thaws the glacial beauty of Josette Day in Cocteau's film and brings her to self-realization through love" (M. Warner "Shearings" in Ann Hamilton: Tropos, p. 89) Tropos indicates the continual metamorphosis between the human and animal. Untitled (Hair Collar) has the same connotations. The wearer would strap on the collar bringing about the physical manifestation of the transmutation between human and horse. The letters that we use to form language and to define ourselves against other animals show themselves to be part of the "animal" collar. David Hickey writes, "And the deeper message of her labor, I suspect, has less to do with making us "sensitive" to the "nature" of that world than it does with reawakening us to its bodily pleasures and to our physical complicity in its predatory habits-to our own awesome capacity for abstraction and denial." (D. Hickey, "In the Shelter of the Word: Ann Hamilton's 'Tropos'" in Ann Hamilton Tropos, p. 124) It is not surprising that Hamilton would place such transformative power on the word and incorporate the alphabet into Untitled (Hair Collar). In 1993 she recounted, "If I had a heroine when I was young, it was probably my grandmother, Lois. We used to read to each other. One of us would read while the other did some household chore. Mostly she would read, of course, so my memories of her all revolve around words. She loved word games, the kind at the back of magazines where a scrambled list of letters, each representing not itself but another letter of the alphabet, could, with a set of clues, reveal a phrase. I was horrible at it but she was a whiz and found them a lot more challenging than ordinary crossword puzzles. This and playing cards were sandwiched between sitting on her couch reading. She would read to me, and I would immediately start daydreaming. So, if you ask me what she read, I can only give you hazy answers." (Quoted in Ibid., p. 125)

Ann Hamilton (b. 1956)

Untitled (Hair Collar)

Details

Ann Hamilton (b. 1956)
Untitled (Hair Collar)
linen collar white hand-embroidered horsehair alphabet with wood and glass vitrine
7 x 20 x 20 in. (17.8 x 50.8 x 50.8 cm.)
Executed in 1993. This work is the sixth atist's proof from an edition of twelve with eight artist's proofs.

Provenance

Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

Exhibited

Columbus, Wexner Center for the Arts; and Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art, the body and the object: Anne Hamilton 1984-1996, 1996 (another example exhibited)
Lyon, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon; and Montreal, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, Ann Hamilton: present-past 1984-1997, 1997-1998 (another example exhibited)
New York, The Second Look: Poetic Objects and Strategies of Seduction, Apex Art Curatorial Program, 1999 (another example exhibited)
Bloomfield Hills, Cranbrook Art Museum, Skin, 1999 (another example exhibited)
Vancouver Art Gallery, Ann Hamilton, 1999 (another example exhibited)

Lot Essay

"Created specifically as a limited edition object rather than for use in an installation or performance activity. It relates conceptually to tropos and to the horsehair that covered the floor of that installation."
The body and the object: Ann Hamilton 1984-1996, Columbus 1996, p. 78

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